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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839757">Brave Young Suitor</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88'>KChan88</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>She Was Bound to Love You [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Period-Typical Homophobia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:22:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,650</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Raoul de Chagny was a woman?</p>
<p>A series featuring the major events (and a few things in-between) from the Phantom of the Opera, with a gender-bent, lesbian Raoul (and a bisexual Christine). ALW based, with Leroux elements.</p>
<p>Interlude I: Raoul and Christine talk after the events of "Notes" and "Prima Donna." Raoul, determined to get to the bottom of the strange letters and anxious to protect Christine, tries to understand what happened the night of Hannibal, her feelings growing deeper. </p>
<p>Christine, scared and desperate to keep Raoul safe, refuses to tell the entire story. Christine's feelings for Raoul start to clarify, even as Madame Giry warns her that Erik is always watching.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>She Was Bound to Love You [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627735</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Brave Young Suitor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Christine can’t quite catch her breath.</p>
<p>Raoul is here. Raoul is <em>here</em> and Raoul shouldn’t be here because Erik—that’s his name, she found out last night when he seemed to say it without meaning to—told her to stay away from Raoul. Erik. It’s so human a name for an Angel. A ghost. He is a man, isn’t he? He always was, right? She doesn’t <em>want</em> to stay away from Raoul, but she doesn’t want Raoul hurt, either, and after her Angel pushed her down this morning, that rage when she took his mask off she…</p>
<p>Well she’s more afraid than she's ever been, and her mind feels rent in two.</p>
<p>
  <em>Stranger than you dreamt it, can you even bear to look…</em>
</p>
<p>Raoul approaches her carefully, with Meg just behind. </p>
<p>"May I sit?" Raoul asks, gesturing at the empty chair next to Christine's, worn out and frayed from all of Madame Giry’s years in the opera house.</p>
<p>Christine nods. She wants to tell Raoul everything. She wants to go back to the sea and that attic with her father and Raoul and their stories and their music but she can't. She can't be anywhere but that candlelit lair deep beneath the opera house. She can't hear anything but organ music and an angel’s voice. She can't see anything but that face. She can't feel anything but her teacher shoving her hard to the ground. </p>
<p>Raoul sits down in the chair while Meg sits nearby on her mother's bed. Meg must have brought Raoul here, otherwise Raoul wouldn’t have known where to go.</p>
<p>"I said I didn't want to see anyone." Christine chances a glance at Meg, who doesn't look the least bit sorry. Christine can't blame her. If Meg came back like she had, Christine wouldn't have listened, either. </p>
<p>Still, she doesn’t want either of them hurt. Carlotta got scenery dropped on her last night, and who can say worse isn’t coming? She was so fascinated by the idea of finally meeting her teacher that she let all of that go, even if she was much afraid as she was enthralled.</p>
<p>A hurt look passes across Raoul's face, but she doesn't give voice to it. "Do you want me to go?" </p>
<p>Christine shakes her head. "No." </p>
<p>Meg looks between Christine and Raoul, getting up from the bed again. "I'm going to go get you something to eat, Christine," she says. "And don't argue, you need it." </p>
<p>Christine comes to herself enough to press Meg's hand when she passes by, trying her best to smile at her friend, who she loves so dearly, who is so steady in her reassurances and her loyalty and her affection.</p>
<p>Raoul puts a light, careful hand on Christine's upper back as Meg goes, worry glimmering in her eyes. "I'm glad to see you're all right. I heard a voice in your room when I came back to retrieve you for dinner last night and then I got this note..."</p>
<p>Christine jolts, hating that she sounds short but she can’t help it. "What note?"</p>
<p>Raoul spoke the words with such honesty, a strange and alarming thing when Christine has become so used to secrets. Erik's secrets. The way he pretended he was an angel and she's still not certain he isn't a ghost. Her own secrets when people asked who her tutor was. But here Raoul is, open and honest and Christine can scarcely bear it. She craves it but it <em>hurts</em> because she feels like she knows everything and nothing about herself all at once.</p>
<p>
  <em>Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. </em>
</p>
<p>Raoul hands her the note, and Christine reads it over, her heart dropping to the pit of her stomach.</p>
<p>Oh <em>no</em>. </p>
<p>"Christine..." Raoul looks her straight in the eyes. "What happened last night?"</p>
<p>Christine crumples the note, and Raoul makes a little noise of protest. "I can't tell you." </p>
<p>Raoul frowns, and when she speaks it's not angry exactly, but full of the stubbornness Christine remembers so well, like throwing something at an impenetrable wall and expecting the wall to crack.</p>
<p>"Can't or won't?" </p>
<p>"Raoul." </p>
<p>"Christine," Raoul presses, still unabashedly kind, but keeping firm. "There was a man's voice in your dressing room last night. If that was a man you were courting then I will not bother you anymore about it, but it...Christine these notes. The threats. I'm worried about you." </p>
<p>Christine blinks, trying trying <em>trying</em> to keep back her tears. "Don't be, Raoul. I'm all right." </p>
<p>Raoul softens. “Christine. You’re crying. Please know I would do anything in the world to help you.”</p>
<p>“I know.” A single sob breaks past Christine’s defenses. “That’s why I can’t tell you.”</p>
<p>“Christine…”</p>
<p>“Please, Raoul,” Christine whispers. “I’m begging you, don’t ask me.”</p>
<p>Christine glances up, and there are tears in Raoul’s eyes too, those hopelessly pretty blue eyes. She lets herself look at Raoul, <em>really</em> look at her, remembering the rose and the charming bow that made her heart go aflutter. Raoul’s lovely, her dark gold hair swept back into a chignon—though Christine might very well miss the braid—that pops out against the hunter green of her skirt and jacket. There’s minimal floral embroidery along the edges of her collar, done in shades of cream and red.  </p>
<p>Is her…her face feels warmer than before. Yes.</p>
<p>“It’s not anything to do with you, I promise,” Christine says, hating that Raoul is upset. “I just…I can’t tell you. You saw the note yourself.”</p>
<p>Red floods Raoul’s cheeks, not in shame, but in anger, and a few of the tears fall. “I don’t bow to anonymous threats. Especially not when they concern someone I care about.”</p>
<p>Christine’s face gets even warmer. Sweet, brave, impetuous Raoul is the same as she’s ever been, even here in the opera house. She’s too good for this place, too good for <em>her</em>, Christine thinks. Christine’s not in love with her Angel that wasn’t the point, she thought he was sent by her father, that he was <em>like</em> a father, but she belongs to him anyway, doesn’t she? Everyone will say so. No, he’s not an angel he’s a man. Isn’t he? God, she knows he must be but she can’t let go of that voice. That voice that drew her in, that taught her, and then said <em>now you cannot ever be free. </em></p>
<p>A spark lights in the pit of Christine's stomach when Raoul takes her hand and draws her out of her reverie, feeling a little like she might die when Raoul smiles with that glint in her eyes.</p>
<p>“I won’t make you tell me now,” Raoul says. “But I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you need me. The managers are fawning over Carlotta, but if they give you trouble, let me know immediately, and I’ll come speak to them. All right?”</p>
<p>“All right,” Christine echoes, tightening her hold on Raoul’s hand.</p>
<p>That's when she makes the mistake of shifting in her chair, her gown riding up near her wrist.</p>
<p>“Christine...” Raoul pauses, and that anger spills from her face into her voice. Not anger at her, anger at Erik even if she doesn’t know the name, and Christine can’t let this <em>happen</em>. “Is that a bruise?”</p>
<p>Christine looks down, and there is a faint purple splash on her skin, but she didn’t notice it before because it didn’t hurt. It must be from when Erik, her Angel, the Phantom, the Opera Ghost grabbed her when she took off his mask.</p>
<p>God why did she do that? She regrets it now. Before the mask, all of it still seemed like a dream. Like hypnosis and magic and something unreal. Frightening, still, in some respects, but not the sheer terror the moment that mask came off, and revealed so much more than a disfigured face.</p>
<p>It revealed a lie. A lie she spent so much time living under, and one she isn’t quite ready to admit as such.  Angels can be terrifying, can’t they? Sometimes they are, in scripture. The names he called her. <em>You little lying Delilah. You little viper</em>. She knows he was angry, but did she deserve such a terrible answer?</p>
<p>“Christine,” Raoul repeats, the anger replaced with desperation. “It’s not my business if you’re in love with the man whose voice I heard last night.” There’s a tinge of pain in Raoul’s words there, and Christine isn’t entirely sure what to do with it. She remembers Raoul mentioning her sisters getting after her about never marrying, but she didn’t ask why, then. “But it is a concern of mine if that man is hurting you,” Raoul continues. “Those notes, and now a bruise?”</p>
<p>“I’m not...” Christine shakes her head. “It’s not like that, I care about... I’m not in love with...with him.”</p>
<p><em>Him</em>. She didn’t mean to say the word him. Saying him means he’s surely a man, and no ghost.</p>
<p>Raoul tilts her head. “Meg said she thought you were kidnapped by the opera ghost last evening, and now all these notes are signed O.G. Is that whose voice I heard?”</p>
<p>“I...”</p>
<p>Christine can’t finish her sentence because she absolutely, and without restraint, bursts out crying. She sobs, even if she swore she wouldn’t. Hot, messy tears come rolling down her cheeks, and then Raoul’s arms are around her. Raoul’s arms are holding her close, and she just wants to stay here, she wants to stay safe.</p>
<p>“It’s all right,” Raoul whispers, even if she still doesn’t have her answer. “I’m here, I promise you I’m here. Meg’s here. Nothing bad will happen again.”</p>
<p>A false proclamation because Raoul doesn’t understand, not yet, but Christine holds onto it anyway. She moves back, her hands still clinging to Raoul’s coat, and there’s a moment, a breath, a spark, even in her grief. Raoul, kind as she is, doesn’t speak to it now, not while Christine’s crying, but Christine feels it. Raoul gently, tenderly takes her hand, loosely intertwining their fingers so that Christine can easily let go if she wants to. But just as Raoul’s whispered name leaves Christine’s lips, the door comes open, and Madame Giry steps inside.</p>
<p>Christine isn't sure what she was going to say after Raoul's name. Her secrets. A profession of...whatever it is these feelings are deep in her chest. Raoul will always be her friend and she’s loved her for years, but there's something else lingering. Not more. A love that feels…different. Full of a giddiness and a heat Christine wishes she had the sense to sort through.</p>
<p>She thinks of that <em>almost maybe</em> kiss on the beach not long before her father died. Perhaps it was more than a childish thing.</p>
<p>But it doesn't matter, because Madame Giry is here, and she and Raoul spring apart. It’s silly that they do because they’re adults, affectionate long-time friends, but Madame Giry is looking at them like she knows something that Christine hasn’t even fully thought out yet.</p>
<p>“Madmoiselle de Chagny,” the ballet mistress says. “I hope you aren’t keeping Christine from her rest.”</p>
<p>Madame Giry stays polite, she has to, because of Raoul’s station, but Christine hears the tell-tale disapproval. Kindness is a <em>sometimes</em> sort of situation with Madame Giry, who believes in discipline above all, and while Christine knows that the older woman cares about her, it can often be hard to parse. There have certainly been plenty of instances when Meg confided to Christine that she wished her mother were warmer, so Christine tries to fill the void where she can.</p>
<p>Raoul stands up, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Only checking in. I should go find the managers, and talk to them about these notes. I assume Carlotta will be starring despite the threats? And despite Christine’s performance? There was a line of young men waiting outside the opera house to see her, when I came in.”</p>
<p>“They have decided so, yes,” Madame Giry answers. She looks at Christine. “Though don’t give up hope, my dear, I expect you will have another opportunity.”</p>
<p>Then, Christine says something before she means to, without thinking about who might hear her.</p>
<p>“I want to sing again, but I’d rather be chosen, not because someone forced it.”</p>
<p>Raoul grasps Christine’s hand quickly, glancing back at Madame Giry in something like a challenge. “You were<em> perfect</em>, Christine. A true testament to your father’s music and to all your hard work. Don’t forget it. I should be off.”</p>
<p>She smiles at Christine before nodding at Madame Giry, and then she’s gone, and the room feels cold again.</p>
<p>There’s only a moment of quiet before Madame Giry speaks again.</p>
<p>"You might like to know what people say about Raoul de Chagny, Christine.”</p>
<p>Christine doesn't answer at first, because maybe she knows and maybe she doesn't, but perhaps if she hears it, her own feelings might clarify. </p>
<p>"No. What do they say?"</p>
<p>"That she...likes to court other women," Madame Giry replies. She raises her hand when Christine tries to speak. "I'm not passing a judgement. I've certainly had some of my ballet girls fall into bed with each other and let them go about their business." </p>
<p>Christine thinks that’s a rather crass way of putting it, but she doesn’t argue.</p>
<p>Madame Giry sits down, and Christine wishes she wouldn't. There's fear in the older woman's eyes. Fear of <em>him</em>, and maybe even sympathy, but Christine wants the only mother figure she has to be brave, to feel for <em>her</em>, and not the ghost, the man below their feet. She doesn't know how to feel about Erik, she doesn't hate him she feels sorry for him but she's so <em>scared</em> and she feels lied to and she....</p>
<p>"I'm only saying that it's a risk, both as far as acceptance from wider society and the..." Madame Giry pauses, apparently searching for how to say something. "…the goings on inside this opera house. Secrets don't stay hidden here, unless they're his. So be careful, before you decide to fall in love with that girl." </p>
<p>"She's my friend," Christine protests. "Like Meg is my friend. I love Meg very much. I love Raoul. It’s the same thing.”</p>
<p>It isn’t. She knows it isn’t. She <em>does</em> love them both, but it’s not the same type of love, is it? She’s never thought of kissing Meg, but she was just thinking about kissing Raoul, wasn’t she? She was.</p>
<p>Madame Giry arches one eyebrow. "I saw the way your look lingered when she left, so don’t try and fool me. She can get away with more than you can, Christine. She's rich. You're not. And even she can't get away with everything. Not here. Not with him watching. Even if she were a man I would warn you off. I am warning you off even more seriously in this situation." </p>
<p>Madame Giry gives Christine a final look and goes, bidding her to rest.</p>
<p>Christine sits with her feelings, for a long moment. She sits with them, and they grow clearer. She thinks of the beach and Raoul laughing. She thinks of the attic as her father taught Raoul to play the violin, an incorrect note ringing through the air. More laughter. She thinks of last night and the rose and Raoul’s smiles. She thinks of the way their fingers intertwined earlier, and how she didn’t want to let go.</p>
<p>She's in love with Raoul, isn't she? Maybe she always was. No, she...she can't do this. She can't fall in love with another woman, with her oldest friend, when all of these other things are going on. When Erik is watching but her Angel isn't an angel, her father wouldn't have sent someone who would shove her like that, who would shout and send threatening notes, would he? Her father was so kind. No. No. She doesn't know. </p>
<p>She <em>does</em> know she can't put Raoul in danger. </p>
<p> </p>
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